Please kindly address this Hobbesian monstrosity as a reality

I remain bewildered by learned, center-left commentators who nonetheless continue trafficking in uncomprehending fables of what could be —

[MAGA] would end the rule of law; [government would abide] the whims of an authoritarian cabal [and] would make the United States a country in which people who stand in the way of the regime ... would be at the mercy of hostile officials

— in place of acknowledging the squalid Leviathan that so plainly rules: a madhouse of neo-nazified gangsters. Theirs is no maybe, could or would-be kingdom of vile. Man, it's open for business.

Unlike Thomas Hobbes' ideal of an absolute monarchy as singularly capable of subduing social conflict and preventing its descent into anarchy, the nightmare of total Trumpism foments communal frictions and inescapable national decay.

I just don't get it. Why so many liberals' prolonged resistance to straightforward declarative force in portraying a conspicuously criminal, repressive regime?

Why the abundance of political decency's relative meekness in characterizing an "authoritarian cabal" that is, in brutal fact, doing what pathological nature intended such crude creatures to do: trying to whack opponents into silence and ruinous obscurity.

All opponents, since authoritarians are insecure thus weak, and yet without fail they conform to Bismarck's astute formulation: The weak are strong because they are ruthless.

Added the Iron Chancellor less discerningly, those of ethical strength are self-enfeebled because they have scruples. Otto's error is understandable; he wasn't around to witness the West's scrupulous, anti-fascist ruthlessness.

Which is what too many center-left voices seem to have lost in waging the politics of offense — the willingness, as FDR's coalition possessed in spades, to not only go on the rhetorical attack, but to attack without fear of "perceived" stridency.

The Old Left did so when confronting its reactionary goons because, quite simply, there are no victories when deploying only moderately aggressive polemics against a severely malignant force.   

Why, so often today, is it former Republicans such as Charlie Sykes who sound the alarm about tyranny — not would-be tyranny — for which one of his readers thanked him, adding, correctly, that "tyranny' is not too strong a word.       

And why, rather than every American center-left commentator, does it take a Russian expatriate, Sykes' guest Garry Kasparov, to recognize that you cannot play it safe when fighting a war against authoritarianism.

Reserved phrases such as Trumpism would end the rule of law, as though that's some sort of unrealized horror, won't cut it.

* This piece is cross-posted at Substack. Subscribe to be notified of new posts.